Wednesday May 29th 1805.

[Lewis]   Last night we were all allarmed by a large buffaloe Bull, which swam over from the opposite shore and coming along side of the white perogue, climbed over it to land, he then alarmed ran up the bank in full speed directly towards the fires, and was within 18 inches of the heads of some of the men who lay sleeping before the centinel could allarm him or make him change his course, still more alarmed, he now took his direction immediately towards our lodge, passing between 4 fires and within a few inches of the heads of one range of the men as they yet lay sleeping, when he came near the tent, my dog saved us by causing him to change his course a second time, which he did by turning a little to the right, and was quickly out of sight, leaving us by this time all in an uproar with our guns in or hands, enquiring of each other the case of the alarm, which after a few moments was explained by the centinel; we were happy to find no one hirt. The next morning we found that the buffaloe in passing the perogue had trodden on a rifle, which belonged to Capt. Clark's black man, who had negligently left her in the perogue, the rifle was much bent, he had also broken the spindle, pivit, and shattered the stock of one of the bluntderbushes on board, with this damage I felt well content, happey indeed, that we had sustaned no further injury.  it appears that the white perogue, which contains our most valuable stores, is attended by some evil gennii. . . . today we passed on the Stard. side the remains of a vast many mangled carcases of Buffalow which had been driven over a precipice of 120 feet by the Indians and perished; the water appeared to have washed away a part of this immence pile of slaughter and still their remained the fragments of at least a hundred carcases  they created a most horrid stench.  in this manner the Indians of the Missouri distroy vast herds of buffaloe at a stroke; for this purpose one of the most active and fleet young men is scelected and <being> disguised in a robe of buffaloe skin, having also the skin of the buffaloe's head with the years and horns fastened on his head in form of a cap, thus caparisoned he places himself at a convenient distance between a herd of buffaloe and a precipice proper for the purpose, which happens in many places on this river for miles together; the other indians now surround the herd on the back and flanks and at a signal agreed on all shew themselves at the same time moving forward towards the buffaloe; the disguised indian or decoy has taken care to place himself sufficiently nigh the buffaloe to be noticed by them when they take to flight and runing before them they follow him in full speede to the precepice, the cattle behind driving those in front over and seeing them go do not look or hesitate about following untill the whole are precipitated down the precepice forming one common mass of dead an mangled carcases; the <Indian> decoy in the mean time has taken care to secure himself in some cranney or crivice of the clift which he had previously prepared for that purpose.    the part of the decoy I am informed is extreamly dangerous, if they are not very fleet runers the buffaloe tread them under foot and crush them to death, and sometimes drive them over the precepice also, where they perish in common with the buffaloe. . . .

Just a good day for buffalo talk. Here's another remarkable incident in which the Corps was exceedingly lucky to escape with no injuries and no great loss or damage to the boats or the stores. Lewis's description of a buffalo jump is great, but Moulton thinks that these buffalo probably drowned in the Missouri. The surrounding country doesn't really provide the necessary high bluffs for a buffalo jump. I'd add to that the fact that it would be unlikely that so much of the meat had been left just to rot. They made 17¾ miles today.

Comments

[Blue the Wild Dog]

Seaman saves the day! I'm beginning to think that Seaman and Sacagawea are the only level-headed ones in the whole expedition.

[mcjoan]

Indeed. Good dog, Seaman, good dog.